It is no great secret that I am a total advocate for technology related advances for our nation’s Public Safety professionals. When it comes to the FIRST 1^st Responders that provide the initial level of security for the public, the need for advancement could not be more relevant. Regardless of what you call these dedicated folks; Communications Officers, Dispatchers, or Call Takers, their job is becoming increasingly more and more difficult as we pile on not just the volume of citizens that can reach out to them, but now the increased ways citizens can communicate, using nearly any device or modality.

Text to 911 ≠ NG911

Some industry leaders equate the rollout of Text to 911 to the evolution of NG911 multimedia communications. I’m not sure that I really agree on that. They often point out the painfully slow adoption rate by citizens, as well as the slow adoption of the technology in 911 centers nationwide. For me, this was no great surprise, as for nearly a decade we have stood by  and watched as county by county PSAPs were added to the FCC’s master list. With over 6,100 PSAPs in the US, rollout was understandably slow, and the true benefit was never realized. Why? In my personal opinion, the deployment was controlled by the carriers and implemented as a business model, not a solution-based capability. The actual services were often limited, wrought with technical problems and lacked the attention to critical details such as location, one of the mainstays of the Public Safety industry. In fact, in most cases, location information was never actually delivered to the PSAP, and was only used by the network to decide the routing of the session to an appropriate PSAP.

“Hey Google . . . “

The latest innovation buzzword in the industry is AI, or Artificial Intelligence. But when you think about it, by definition, AI has actually been around for a long time, since the evolution of the computer. The very first mechanical computer or automatic computing engine concept was conceptualized as far back as 1822 by Charles Babbage. It was at that time Babbage began work on the Difference Engine, and it is considered to be the first automatic computing machine.

(See https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000984.htm)

 Today, many of us think of AI as being more than just an oversized calculator. Intelligence has a connotation of the ability to cognitively reason and then learn, providing a layer of self-governed decision-making capabilities where decisions are made based on fact and analytics and not emotional response. This brings to light something that is likely the biggest fear of AI naysayers . . .

The Terminator Paradigm

Admittedly, my biggest personal fear of AI is the Terminator Paradigm. If AI was left to grow and learn unfettered by human intervention, these super intelligent and logical entities would quickly come to the rational conclusion that humans are dangerous to the growth and sustainability of the planet, and therefore attempt to eliminate us. This is the entire premise of the Terminator movie series, and it likely has some validity to it. Fortunately, humans will likely remain in control and not implement full Artificial Intelligence, but an iteration of it that I call:

Assistive Intelligence – The New AI

The real value of Artificial Intelligence is the ability of technology to provide empirical decision-making guidance based not only on factual data points, but historical data. This is where ‘intelligence’ comes into play; taking past history into consideration and allowing the process of machine-learning to take place. Putting this in the premise of Public Safety and the call takers, no longer do they need to fear the possibility of being overloaded with information or inundated with so much data they will miss critical indicators needed for them to make a decision. The new AI, Assistive Intelligence, will help them sort through the masses of information presented to them, quickly locating the relevant bits of information that are buried within and germain to the present situation.

Re-spinning Technology for Tomorrow

One of the many valuable features that the Avaya Contact Center offers is something called Whisper Page. This feature allows you to intrude on another user and be heard by them without being able to hear the user’s existing call which is not interrupted.

For example, as shown above: User A is on a call with user B. When user C intrudes on user A, they can be heard by user A but not by user B who can still hear user A.

The content of the Whisper Page can be audio from an AI Engine with specific advice to the call taker based on the context of the call as determined by a Speech to Text analytics engine.

One use case currently being developed by an Avaya DevConnect partner is the detection of a stroke condition based on specific speech patterns. A Whisper Page can alert the call taker to the condition, and then direct them to take on a specific list of questions suggesting the best course of action to take. The difference here is that the human (a.k.a. the Call Taker) remains in control of the situation and has the final decision-making authority. The AI tool is merely automating the Quality Assurance (QA) that is likely already taking place. What we have added is increased efficiency with the ability to do real-time QA providing instant feedback to the call taker.

The moral of the story? Understand and embrace technology. Allow it to contribute to your current capabilities and enhance them. Just think twice if the company name is Skynet.

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This week, an article by Nicole Lindsey that was published in CPO Magazine,  argued that citizen data privacy concerns outweigh the need for reliable location information being provided to first responders in the event of an emergency. This was in direct response to the Commission’s Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) for enhanced 911 location data.

In this FNPRM, US wireless carriers would need to start providing vertical location accuracy when a user placed a cellular 911 call. The ‘accuracy’ that was proposed was to be within a height of plus or minus 3 meters to help indicate the floor, or vertical ‘Z’ axis for users in multi-story buildings. The goal to be met, was to require this enhanced location data in the Top 25 U.S. markets by the date of April 2021, and then a secondary milestone of the Top 50 U.S. markets 2-years later, by 2023.

The alarming position taken is one that incites mistrust in our nation’s First Responders as well as the entire Public Safety infrastructure as a whole. In her article, Ms. Lindsey states, “For years, the biggest telecom network operators in the U.S. [. . .] have been secretly selling location data of their customers”. While that claim is obviously true, it does sensationalize the situation a bit, especially when linking the location data leaks to emergency call traffic within the network. By doing this, the article unfairly lumps our Nation’s 6,100+ Public Safety Answer Points (PSAPs) into a category that is akin to telemarketers peddling back and knee braces, as well as low cost health insurance plans and countless other scams being perpetrated on our public in the rash of Robocalling activities currently afoot.

The last I checked, PSAP’s we’re not trolling the general public looking to push fire and ambulance services on unsuspecting citizens. Also, I’m fairly certain that anyone that was having an emergency that needed to call 911 would want to share their precise location information in an effort to save their life. Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure most people would opt-in to that service. But, during an emergency, things happen quickly. Individuals don’t always or the ability to think with a clear head. It is for this reason that if a person indicates they’re having an emergency event, and they dial 911, it is likely a good idea to turn on location services if they’re off, and even a better idea to transmit that information to the PSAP so that the appropriate services can be dispatched to the correct and accurate address.

Yes, Robocalling, caller ID spoofing, and selling location-based data for nefarious purposes should all be illegal and curtailed using any means possible. But that should not impede or impact the ability for legitimate public safety requests to be processed by the network and the PSAP in a manner that provides them with detailed and discreet location information, including altitude.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let’s focus on the problem and deliver a workable solution that is not only efficient and secure, but one that protects citizen privacy in non-emergency events.

Fletch – Follow me on Twitter @Fletch911

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Back in the spring of 2012, I had the privilege of presenting at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Real-Time Communication conference in Chicago. In the session, I presented my construct for emergency-services location information delivery, in a new over the top model that did not require a next-generation 911 network or ESInet. Although many laughed at the thought, Dr. Henning Schulzrinne, a noted professor at Columbia University, and one of the authors of several Session Initiation Protocol RFC’s invited me to present my ideas at a Federal Communications Commission Workshop on Upcoming Test Bed to Improve Indoor Location Accuracy for Wireless 911 Calls.

Of course, I agreed and made my way down to Washington DC where I delivered my presentation. I laid out my over-the-top delivery methodology for additional data, where I effectively bypassed the voice carrier networks using the Internet and releasing Ma Bell’s grasp and control of emergency services location data, and it’s strongarm binding to pre-existing static location records and phone numbers.

While many saw the value of my architecture, of course, there were a few naysayers. None the less, the idea itself was simple and quickly solved the problem of getting data from the origination point to the resources that needed it; instead of storing the information in a carrier-hosted database, where the subscriber would not only have to pay for storage but maintenance as well as updates. By placing a static, but unique, pointer in the carrier database, any queries could be redirected back to the origination network. Not only would this remove the excessive costs charged by the 911 location database providers, but the actual information in the database would also now be available in real-time, and be the most current available.

If any updates occurred, such as location change or a change of descriptive information, these would only be needed in the internal copy of the database. With this being owned and managed by the enterprise and entirely under their control, this model was much more efficient than the carrier-based model. The only piece missing was the connection to the PSAP, however by publishing the URL to the data in the Enterprise, Public Safety was able to reach out to the data when needed. The functional element on the enterprise side of this model filled the role of feeding the URL data and proved to be a practical and efficient solution. Based on this model, Avaya had the SENTRY™ emergency call management platform developed by 911 Secure, LLC as well as the associated integration modules. Now, enterprise networks could prepare for NG 911 services that were going to arrive shortly.

The entire premise for this architecture was because the connection between the originating network and the public safety answer point was an analog circuit capable of voice communications only. What was missing and remained absent for the next 6 years 2 months and 26 days, was a secure, high-speed connection between the origination and the destination.

Earlier this year, RapidSOS announce the interoperability released with iOS 12 telephones. When those devices placed an emergency call, the location payload stored in the device would be transmitted to the NG 911 Additional Data Repository (ADR) being provided by RapidSOS. PSAP’s could access the repository by a standard query, once being vetted, and were able to retrieve the location of devices that originated emergency calls within their service area. Just a short time afterward, Google announced similar capabilities, also utilizing the RapidSOS repository. Within months of the availability, over 2000 PSAPs added the capability to their centers, covering nearly 70% of the population of the US.

Full disclosure, for the past five years I have held a non-compensated position as a technical advisory board member to RapidSOS. Because of this, I saw firsthand the value this service brought to the table with this new national repository. Since RapidSOS started to ingest data from any source through their published APIs, I immediately went to work with the software engineers at 911 Secure, LLC, the developers behind SENTRY™, and had them create an integration module allowing the enterprise also to contribute location and additional data with emergency calls. Within a few short weeks, they delivered a working model placing data in the RapidSOS sandbox, and the search began for an Avaya customer to be part of a live pilot program.

Fortunately, Shelby County Tennessee, a long time Avaya customer, was in the process of upgrading their CS1K communications platform to the latest Avaya Aura. Over on the public safety side, Shelby County 911 had just implemented the embedded RapidSOS capability in there Motorola VESTA™ platform, as well as the RapidSOS Lite web-based functionality in the PSAP serving the County facility. After presenting our use case to both parties, we began installation of SENTRY™ just before the holidays.

Finally, the day of reckoning came. On January 18, 2019, 2278 days after I presented my over-the-top architecture to The Federal Communications Commission, a live call to 911 was placed from the Shelby County Buildings Department, answered at the Shelby County 911 Center, where they received Voice, precise location, and additional data in the form of floor plans. There it was, we made public safety technology history. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride, as we changed the game forever, and proved that NG911 was not only possible but a reality.

This past year I had the honor of being in the Oval Office with Hank Hunt as the President signed Kari’s Law into the law of the land, I was invited to be part of the Haleyville Alabama 50th year 911 Day celebration and be a Grand Marshal with several of my good friends in the Town parade. Now, I was a part of telecommunications history as Avaya, 911 Secure, RapidSOS, Shelby County Buildings, and Shelby County 911 worked in concert to enable the very first emergency call delivering NG 911 additional data to the PSAP.

Not only will this technology help save lives but provide desperately needed location details to public safety first responders, as well as critical multimedia such as video and still pictures in the event of an emergency.

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A few of you may remember, back in July 1969, what was then be most famous, and furthest, Long distance phone call ever made. As for the rest of you, you are now Googling of phones even existed that long ago!

I can assure you that they did, and on July 20, 1969, then President Nixon spoke with crew members Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin via telephone-radio transmission, with the  President in the Oval Office and the Apollo XI astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin while they were on the surface of the Moon.

Of course, that call originated on landline circuits, that is upconverted to a satellite link and then beamed into outer space on the Goldstone Deep Space Network. In many ways, this radio transmission is capable of voice and data, similar to any terrestrial based radio transmission. We’ve modern advances in communications, just like we have Wi-Fi here on the surface, the International Space Station (ISS) is also connected.

The magic of VoIP allows any IP-based telephone to exist no matter where the connectivity is coming from. That being said, it was really no amazing feat to put an IP phone inside the IIS, which apparently was done a few years ago. Unfortunately, IP phones don’t live on their own, they need to register and connect with a call server that provides trunk resources to the outside world. Once again, our space based VoIP phone follows this same rule, and is connected to an IP telephony system inside NASA headquarters.

As many people do, when calling international numbers people forget to dial the zero in the 011 International prefix. On the ISS phone, one of the astronauts recently dialed ‘9’ for an outside line, forgot the ‘0’, and then dialed ‘1 1’ followed by an international number. Of course, being a KARI’S LAW compliant telephone system, as soon as the system processed 911, the call was sent to public safety triggering internal alarms along the way.

Fortunately, everyone realized it was just an accident, and there was no emergency launch of a police cruiser to intercept the IIS in orbit! So what’s the lesson learned? 911 needs to work everywhere, including “up there”! But, it might be a good time to put in a Little missile prevention programming J

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For as long as I can remember, we built an engineered networks for  “3 R’s”. Resilience, Redundancy, and Reliability. Following the simple rule would protect you from the 50-year flood, the 100-year storm, and many other “rainy day outages”. When the network was up and running, humming away and performing nominally, it was considered a sunny day. Systems were online, everything was running well within specification, and network administrators would sit and babysit their huge collection of silicon and copper wires.

Every once in a while, the skies would become cloudy, network elements would fail, conductivity would be lost, and the data center would run at something less than full capacity. While this was certainly something that needed to be addressed, stress levels remained tolerable as that engineered Resiliency, Redundancy, and Reliability were all there allowing data to be processed with little to any notice outside of those directly responsible for the systems uptime.

Before the evolution of the Internet, and the acceptance of cloud-based services in massive data centers, most facilities manage their own data centers where they had full control over the building, environmentalists, and even diverse carrier network connectivity. Despite this, the IT “Big Bang” (a.k.a. the Internet) occurred in considerably shook up the model. Massive data centers sprung up around the country out in the middle of farmlands that housed thousands and thousands of servers, virtual machines, and facilities for nearly every industry.

There was no mistaking it, the cloud was here and everyone was in it. Performance and capacities rivaled that of localized data centers, and with the proper design, a mesh environment could be established where even if a portion of the network did go off-line, several other nodes were standing by the ready to pick up the slack. Too many, we finally reached a utopia of computing power, and more and more critical applications were perfectly comfortable sitting in the public or quasi-public cloud.

Most of the time, I try to keep my thinking simplistic. I like to go back to the basics and understand the fundamentals of just about anything that I do. I believe if you truly understand, at a very deep level, how a certain process operates then when that process fails your equipped with the capabilities to properly troubleshoot, repair it, and, most importantly, design around a similar failure in the future.

The most recent victim over the New Year’s holiday was the CenturyLink network. News reports over the weekend noted that areas of the country including Idaho New Mexico and Minnesota were affected as well as residential services in 35 total states. 911 services were also affected across the country which prompted nationwide alerts to cell phone users advising them to utilize local 10 digit numbers in case of an emergency. Initial signs of the outage were detected around 1 AM Pacific time Thursday morning with the resolution being achieved by approximately 6 PM Pacific time on Friday for a total of about 41 hours.

Five nines reliability??

When we build networks, we strive for five nines reliability, or 99.999% uptime calculated on an annual basis. Mathematically this works out to be just over five minutes of outage allowed per year. Based on 41 hours of disruption in the CenturyLink network, they’re starting off a brand-new year already down to just 2 1/2 nines, or 99.531 by my calculation.

So let’s look a little deeper into this particular failure, keeping in mind that the full root cause analysis is still likely a week or so away.

RESILIENCE

In many cases, resilience is not a specific thing. Resilience is the ability to step back into action when any particular outage occurs. It doesn’t define what that action should be, only that it was quickly identified and remediated. So while it’s a bit nebulous, you might say that resiliency is likely one of the most important pieces of any recovery plan. Contingencies are expected, spare parts are readily available, and monitoring tools have been deployed to quickly isolate problems, as well as the training and skill sets of personnel to utilize those tools and carry out any remediation tasks.

RELIABILITY

When we talk about reliability, we talk about the confidence level that a particular component will perform nominally. For example, an incandescent light bulb may operate for up to 2000 hours, but new LED replacement lamps are routinely quoted as 50,000 hours of operation, making those lamps 25 times “more reliable”. In telecommunications networks, if you cannot increase in individual components reliability, utilizing a high-availability, the active-active model can ultimately achieve the same goal. If one processor fails, the other processor is already running taking over the operation. This shouldn’t be confused with active – standby, where there is still a disruption, although minimal, as the secondary processor comes online. The critical component here is the detection of the failure and the redirection to the secondary processor.

REDUNDANCY

 There is always strength in numbers. Redundancy goes hand-in-hand with both resiliency and reliability. Nothing ever lasts forever, especially electronic components. We try to calculate an MTBF (mean time before failure), however, those numbers are usually unrealistic for day-to-day operations as there are many contributing factors at the subcomponent level that could cause catastrophic failure.

The magic to running a solid and stable network is to closely manage, monitor, and statistically analyze every possible metric that there is. When a failure or does occur, careful root cause analysis must be undertaken to determine what in fact failed, but it doesn’t end there. Taking it a step further and understanding the key indicators that were present prior to that failure are going to be what help you proactively divert that failure in the future. Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. Sunny day outages are the new uptime threat.

It’s Sunday night in New England, and once again and I find myself checking into a hotel getting ready for customer meetings several hours away from home.

Tonight, I’m checking into a Homewood Suites by Hilton, in Warwick Rhode Island. Like most Hilton properties, this franchise is very clean, fairly new or recently renovated, and digitally transformed with their App based check-in process, and digital room keys. As I pull into the property, my Hilton App pings me and reminds me that my digital room keys are now active on my phone, and I only need to stop by the front desk to pick up my complimentary bottles of water, and Milano cookies (my favorite part!)

As I park my car, I remember thinking; newer property, well-maintained, new digital locks. I am going to give this property an 80% chance of being Kari’s Law compliant.

Upon entering my room, I am greeted by the standard TeleMatrix Hotel room phone, and a faceplate that says, ”EMERGENCY Dial 9–911”. While many of my Kari’s Law fact checkers out there will immediately point this out as a noncompliant hotel, I shrug this fact off, as the face plate on the phone means nothing.

The ability to actually dial 911 directly is what really counts. But, what it does mean, is that now there is some investigative work that needs to take place to find out what the real situation is.

As I go to leave my room to go downstairs and speak with the night manager, I noticed the sign on my door that says:
”CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT  911”

Uh-Oh! NOW we have a problem! There is a sign that specifically says to dial 911 and a phone that is labeled 9-911. This means that both ways better work.

As I reach the front desk, the night manager (we’ll call her Allison) greets me and asked if she could be of any assistance? I sigh slightly, warning her that this is going to be a complex and long-winded story, but I needed to ask her a few questions about 911. Immediately, she made sure that I didn’t need to call 911, which I thought was a great response to my statement, and clearly, this woman had a game plan formulating in her head already. I reassured her there was no emergency, and I explained Kari’s Law to her. Allison then told me she never heard of Kari’s Law, but knew about the requirement to directly dial 911, on-site notification, and began to show me the process.

While many Hilton Hotels use Avaya or older Nortel Systems, there are some that do not. This particular franchise had a competitor system installed, that I would guess to be six years old or more. Despite the age of the system, Allison showed me how the console would indicate the extension number of any phone dialing 911 would display to her, letting her assess the situation.

She then pointed to another phone on the counter, that was marked, “EMERGENCY PHONE FOR 911 CALL BACK – DO NOT USE”

Allison then explained that the Warwick Police Department would call that phone whenever they received a 911 call from the hotel. This call was placed while a Police unit was en route to the location, and the 911 call taker would attempt to ascertain any additional information as well as the status of the emergency updating the responding resources accordingly.

If it was a false alarm, the police would still respond to file a report and be certain there was no need for public safety.

I thought to myself, “what a great example of exactly what Kari’s Law was designed to do! Focus on DISPATCHABLE LOCATION or address the units needed to respond too”.  The room is not relevant, that information can be gathered on-site, verbally or electronically through a simple display mechanism, as well as additional information that is germane to the incident.

In this case, awareness was raised, a plan was established that met the needs of local public safety, as well as the hotel property, and despite the cries of 911 database providers who are losing their billable revenues, these simple plans work. Nothing in this plan burdens MLTS operator with costly upgrades, monthly billing of 911 services, and complexity. The solution is just a simple workflow response to a life and death problem, and one that would have likely saved Kari Hunt’s life on that East Texas December 1st in 2013, as per the Coroner’s testimony.

Hotels, businesses, schools, hospitals or any other facility with an MLTS now know this problem exists. And the fix is simple in most cases.

This story comes at a perfect time. The Federal Communications Commission has an active Notice of Proposed Rule Making under FCC docket 18-261. At this very moment, the various stakeholders are frantically jockeying for position hoping to get their revenue-based model codified as law when it is simply not needed. As Hank Hunt so eloquently states in his September 26, 2018 testimony, these folks are, “nursing a bottom line like a little baby.”

I so wish that I could speak like that, but Hank Hunt has me pinned to the mat with his command of the English language and ability to convey his deepest thoughts and feelings. Kudos Hank! You got me beat like Kansas City barbecue being served in Winona, Texas! (not too bad for damn Yankee, huh?)

While we’ve made great progress over the past five years, now is not the time to sit back on our laurels. The important legislation is being discussed that directly affect how this law is implemented. There are those that are looking to fix the problem, and many others looking just to profit from it. I suggest you take the time and read the various responses to the Federal Communications Commission’s NPRM, as well as follow the reply comments that will be coming in over the next 30 days.

Anyone can go to http://www.fcc.gov/ecfs and search under Kari’s Law or 18-261. And remember, ANYONE can comment. Additionally, ANYONE can file a reply comment even if no initial comment was filed. In fact, you can listen to a recent podcast with FCC CTO Eric Burger, recorded at the recent Real-Time Communications Conference held at IIT, the Illinois Institute of Technology.

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One of the universal truths for all 9-1-1 centers is that there will be new people.

In the fire service and some dispatch agencies, these are referred to as “probies”, short for Probationary Employee. Whatever they are called, however, they are the most important resource your agency has, unless you want to continue answering phones until you are well into your eighties or beyond. After all, we can’t keep doing the job forever, so we need to make sure there is a next generation to replace us.

Sadly this process doesn’t go as easily or smoothly as we would like it. An entire book could be written on the process of recruitment, hiring, training, evaluation, and retention (and perhaps it will be). But I would like to keep this short so let’s just focus for a minute on some critical things that the new person needs to know and the people already on the job need to know. If you have additions to this please share.

To Those Already On The Job:

The new person does not arrive fully formed with everything they need to know bestowed by the training process, their life’s experience, or time spent watching Chicago Fire, COPS or even CHiPs. They will only be a successful employee if you provide an environment for them to be successful. Even if you have never seen yourself as a trainer, CTO, or anyone close to having official mentoring responsibilities, the truth is they need you to help them. Be patient, be open-minded, but be firm and fair in the process. Understand that how you treat them in their first weeks and months on the job will have more impact on their career than you can ever imagine.

Do not use the way you were treated as the road-map for how you should treat your new person. Use instead the road map of how you SHOULD have been treated. In dealing with adults this means treating people with respect, appreciation, and understanding. It is not easy to learn new things. Does this mean that every new person should always stay in the job, of course not? Some people will wash out, that is just the way it is. Sadly, many good dispatchers are lost to the poison of bad coworkers. Either they don’t accept them, don’t help them or just don’t care. We are better than that.

If we are a profession, then it means we should support those who come into the profession behind us. Be a resource, be helpful, be kind, and show by example what a great dispatcher can and should be. Even if you never work directly with the new hire, leading by example is a powerful tool for creating our next great generation of Dispatchers. Do your part. Please.

To The New People:

Welcome to one of the world’s greatest professions. You are now part of a family, which is a good thing and a bad thing. Your feelings will get hurt. Get over it. Your opinion may not be welcomed, get over it. You will be expected to be the first person in the center every shift and the last one to leave. Get over it. You will have to learn to quietly listen and take in all that goes on around you, interjecting only when critically necessary. That is as it should be. Accept it. You will be expected to learn and study when others may be taking a break. That is the way it should be. You will never gossip about your coworkers, tell stories “out of school” or badmouth people you work with. Make this truth the first and last thing you say to yourself each day. If you can do these things, the people you work with will come to trust you and you will become a part of the team. The people you work with will become like family. They will help you, support you, take care of you, look out for you and your life will be far more “rich” for knowing them.

This will not be because you completed all the tasks on the checklist. It will not be because your words and opinions prove your worth to the organization. No, your actions and your approach to your job will show others (and yourself) that you belong. Imagine a baseball player who got the highest salary but never hit a home-run. Or a chef who never stepped foot in a kitchen? It’s not what you say that earns you trust or builds your reputation, it is how you work. Show your fellow dispatchers you care by your actions.

Take the time to learn and never stop. Go to the weddings and the funerals. Sign the birthday cards. Bring in food for the shift once in a while. Take part in the important rituals that are part of any great organization. Most of all, learn how to be a great dispatcher. We learn not by speaking, but by listening, watching, showing an interest, and asking questions. This is hard. In this day and age, we want to share our opinion, to stake our claim. This will not endear you to those you work with. In public safety we must often act based on intuition, just knowing what is going on and what is required. In order for intuition to be effective, trust is required. Do everything you can to build that trust– trust of yourself and trust of others– and you will soon find out what many of us have known so long, being a part of the 9-1-1 world is one of the greatest jobs you will ever know.

C. Carver, ENP

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This classic, and timeless post by Christopher Carver, ENP, is one that I am proud to put on my little space in the interwebs, for your education and enjoyment.  Chris has had a long and reputable career in Public Safety, whose actions and guidance to others likely saved countless lives that will never know or appreciate. Early in 2015, Christopher Blake Carver joined NENA the new PSAP Operations Director. In this role, Carver oversees projects related to current, emerging, and prospective issues affecting 9-1-1 centers. He is someone I consider not only a close colleague in the industry, but a true friend.

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